A BRITISH businessman offered to sell at least 200 ground-to-air missiles for use in a deadly plot to terrorise airline passengers across America, a court was told yesterday.

Hemant Lakhani, 69, from Hendon, North London, told an undercover FBI agent that the shoulder-held missiles could be used to shoot down ten to fifteen aircraft simultaneously on the second anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks, it is alleged.

He later discussed being able to acquire a $3 million (£1.6 million) “dirty bomb” — a nuclear device that could spread radioactive material over a two-miles radius, the court was told.

Mr Lakhani, who has lived and worked in London for the past 30 years in the garment industry, has denied the charges and claims that he is the victim of an elaborate entrapment operation by US agents. The white-haired pensioner appeared in a courtroom in Newark, New Jersey, yesterday more than 16 months after being arrested in an FBI sting operation. He is charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to terrorists, one count of unlawful brokering of foreign defence articles, two counts of money laundering, and one count of attempting to import merchandise into the US by means of false statements.

Stuart Rabner, assistant US federal attorney, said for the prosecution: “This case is about a man who enthusiastically tried to sell 200 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to people who he believed would use them to shoot down planes in the sky with people aboard as part of a terrorist attack on the United States.

“He spent more than a year and a half eagerly trying to make this deal happen, actively trying to smuggle 200 shoulder-fired missiles into the United States, all the time issuing advice on how to shoot planes out of the sky.”

Mr Rabner told the jury that Mr Lakhani was also heard to praise Osama bin Laden as doing “a very good job” with the September 11 attacks. Mr Lakhani was arrested in August 2003 at a hotel overlooking Newark airport moments after delivering a sample missile to an FBI informant. He has since been held in the Passaic County Jail, New Jersey.

Mr Rabner claimed that Mr Lakhani told the would-be missile buyer: “There are an average of up to 400 people on each commercial airliner and the busiest flight days are Mondays and Fridays. That is the best time to strike.”

Those who knew Mr Lakhani described him as “more Del Boy than Del Boy”, after the character in Only Fools and Horses. It is a phrase Mr Lakhani’s lawyer will use in court to describe his client, claiming that the entire plot was “made up by agents who set out to entrap Mr Lakhani”.

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